Global Warming Hurting Winter Sports

A report published by the David Suzuki Foundation (DSR) warned that global warming could cripple winter sports and winter tourism in Canada.

"If heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions are not significantly cut, global warming stands to wipe out more than half of Canada's ski season later this century with few exceptions," said the DSF study.

The report was released in Vancouver targeting the opening day of the world conference on sport and the environment. The report estimated that if immediate action is not taken against climate change by 2050 a range of Canadian sports and pastimes would be obsolete. Skiing, snowboarding, outdoor skating and ice fishing will all be drastically impacted by climate change. A shorter winter across Canada would drastically cut into the $5 million winter sport industry.

The foundation called on Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games to track, measure and offset all major emissions during the games, including emissions from spectator travel. Later Monday, VANOC announced at the same conference that they have set a target to neutralize up to 300,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions from Games.

PR Coup for RIM

Research In Motion Ltd. won a huge public relations coup when President Obama was able to persuade his security staff to let him keep his Blackberry.

RIM makes all Blackberry devices and runs the network that all messages pass through and is RIM (Research In Motion Ltd.) based in Waterloo, Ontario gained a huge public relations coupknown in corporate and government circles for its superior security system (encrypting, redirecting and then reassembleing messages).

SLF Fundraiser Halted

Recently a Calgary Catholic Teachers Association fundraiser for the Steven Lewis Foundation (SLF- grassroots AIDS awareness and aid) was halted by a Calgary Bishop. The Catholic church objects to the promotion of birth control as a tool to help stem the aids epidemic.

Steven Lewis, a Canadian and a former special envoy for the United Nations, replied that condom use is only one part of his foundation's strategy to combat AIDS. He said his group also promotes abstinence and fidelity — two things that are in line with the beliefs of the Catholic church. "I think the bishop is making a mistake in allowing doctrinal dogma to overtake common sense," Lewis said Friday. "I don't want to get into a stormy brew with the bishop. I just think that's it not really terribly fair. It is in a sense a violation of human rights for the bishop to say to Catholic teachers, you cannot support an organization you want to support."

How much further can the Catholic church push their anti birth control doctrine in the face of progressive AIDS prevention around the world without serious backlash?

G20 Summit

April 1st brought world leaders together in London, England to discuss the global economic crisis and drew over 4,000 protesters to the financial district.

President Obama claims the summit marks a turning point in the economic crisis as leaders of the world's largest economies work together to fix a failing system. "It was historic because of the size and scope of the challenges we face and because of the timeliness and magnitude of our response," he said.

The resulting deal:

• Bankers' pay and bonuses will be subject to stricter controls
• A new Financial Stability Board will be set up to work with the IMF to ensure co-operation across borders and provide an early warning mechanism for the financial system
• There will be greater regulation of hedge funds and credit ratings agencies
• A common approach to cleaning up banks' toxic assets has been agreed
• The world's poorest countries will receive $100bn extra aid
• G20 countries are already implementing the biggest economic stimulus "the world has ever seen" - an injection of $5tn by the end of next year

Danger of Social Networking

Social networking is rapidly becoming one of the most popular methods of communication and interaction in North America but many don't realize the amount of personal information they're giving away by keeping an active blog, facebook or twitter account. Social networking sights make a profit by offering targeted advertisging to companies based on your personal information and college and university students are 27% more likely to have their identity stolen largely due to the vast personal information they unknowingly give away online. Status updates tell a criminal or prediator exactly where you'll be, how you're feeling, your personal habits and hobbies. Advertisers, criminals and friends alike gain invaluable insight into your life by what you share online.

* Never, ever give out your social security or driver’s license numbers
* Consider unique user names & passwords for each profile
* Vary your passwords and change them regularly
* Don’t give out your username & password to 3rd parties (even if it helps you connect to others and build your network
* Avoid listing the following information publicly: date of birth, hometown, home address, year of high school or college graduation, primary email address
* Assuming you plan to be active in social media, minimize the use of personal information on your profiles that may be used for password verification or phishing attacks
* Only invite people to your network that you know or have met vs. friends of friends and strangers
* For password security verification questions, us a password for all answers (rather than the answer to the specific question)
* When age-shifting to protect your real birthday, keep the date close, otherwise, you may expose yourself to age discrimination
* Watch where you post and what you say, as it can be used against you later.
* Google yourself regularly and monitor your credit

Be smart and avoid making yourself a target.

Earth Hour

Developed by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Earth Hour is meant to encourage people to shut off the lights, or at the very least dim them, from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. local time to help raise awareness for climate change.

This year, nearly 4,000 municipalities in 88 countries are expected to take part and a number of key landmarks will fade to black, including New York's Empire State Building, the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro and the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

"Turning off our lights for an hour isn't going to solve climate change, but what it does do is show individuals that they can make a difference in the fight against global warming and sends a really strong message to world leaders that action is needed now," said Tara Wood of WWF Canada.

Google Street View

I'll admit, Google Earth is quite cool; being able to zero in on your street, neighborhood or town is fun and can be useful. What worries me is the new ability to watch your street and house... Google Street View launched in the spring last year in select cities and give subscribers the ability to literally watch their street. Apparently license plates and faces are blurred but that doesn't really give much protection to those being watched and the original files are still out there to be seen by someone.

Google Street View, when operated, displays photos that were previously taken by a camera mounted on an automobile, and can be navigated by using the mouse to click on photograph icons displayed on the screen in your direction of travel. Using these devices, the photos can be viewed in different sizes, from any direction, and from a variety of angles.

As cool as that sounds doesn't it creep you out a little? To me it sounds a little too much like Big Brother's watching...

Twilight!!

I have officially succumb to the Twilight hype. Who would have thought a love story with a vampires and werewolves would be so captivating and well written.

My sleep deprivation (am spending every night reading until the wee hours) began with watching Twilight this weekend, multiple times and then reading Twilight, New Moon and now Eclipse... I haven't been drawn into a story this deeply for a while now and am completely enthralled!

Babs

The Polar Bear Debate

Governments of 5 arctic countries agreed last Thursday at a summit in Norway that climate change has had a negative impact on polar bears and their habitat, calling it the largest threat against the large carnivorous.

The question now is how Canada will move forward with the situation. Canada holds 60% of the world's polar bear population and have ranked bears as a species of concern but not threatened as our American counterparts have. The issue is one of huge debate between environmentalist who claim the lack of sea ice is harming the survival of polar bears while Inuit groups claim there is a healthy, stable number of polar bears.

At the summit Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States all agreed to update the 1973 Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears, which was primarily concerned with protecting polar bears from hunting, and outlawed the practice for all but indigenous people. The new agreement outlined a shift in focus to include climate change as a priority for future conservation efforts.

"The parties agreed that long-term conservation of polar bears depends upon successful mitigation of climate change," the countries said in a joint statement. "[The] impacts of climate change and the continued and increasing loss and fragmentation of sea ice … constitute the most important threat to polar bear conservation."

Environmentalists are hopeful the agreement will spur each of the countries to pursue more aggressive strategies for battling climate change it, however, falls short of making a direct appeal for action to the United Nations climate conference, scheduled to take place in Copenhagen in December 2009, where countries will plan to negotiate a treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

What do you think? Should Canada list polar bears as a threatened species against the wishes of Inuit groups or are the environmentalists making too big a deal of the impact of climate change on sea ice and its impact on polar bears? Please post your comments and any further links you might have on this subject and give your opinion on my blog poll.

Condoms won't stop the spread of aids, says Pope

That headline graced the covers of many newspapers today.

For the first time the Pope directly addressed the controversial issue which has divided much of the Catholic church. "You can't resolve it (aids) with the distribution of condoms," the Pope told reporters aboard his plane to Yaounde, Cameroon. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."(CBC NEWS)

The church officially promotes fidelity, chastity and abstinence in the fight against the aids crisis in Africa, however, health workers (including some from the church) promote condoms as an essential elements in the prevention and protection of sexually transmitted diseases.

Beyond the questions of basic protection an interesting question is raised - should the fight against aids be focused on the stalling the spreading of the disease (condom & abstinence) or is the education of the population and the availability of drugs where emphasis should be focused?

What do you think?

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

A few random info bits to ponder while enjoying green beer today.

• St. Patrick is considered a patron saint of Ireland and the March 17th celebration is a national holiday in Ireland.
• Originally blue was the colour of St. Patrick but as the celebration took on multinational proportions and its association Irish culture and shamrock symbolism grew it changed to Irish green.
• The three leafed shamrock was also used to explain the holy trinity to pre-christian Irish.
• The emphasis of drinking alcohol on St. Patrick's day can be linked to the pagan-Roman celebration of Bacchanalia on March 15 and 16, whose patron Bacchus was the Roman wine god.
  

In the 1990's the Irish government began a campaign to use St. Paddy's Day to showcase Ireland and its culture with three goals for the festival:

• Offer a national festival that ranks amongst all of the greatest celebrations in the world and promote excitement throughout Ireland via innovation, creativity, grassroots involvement, and marketing activity.
• Provide the opportunity and motivation for people of Irish descent, (and those who sometimes wish they were Irish) to attend and join in the imaginative and expressive celebrations.
• Project, internationally, an accurate image of Ireland as a creative, professional and sophisticated country with wide appeal, as we approach the new millennium.

Enjoy!

CaniX

Apparently there's a new cross country sport in town. It's being proclaimed as the newest in outdoor health for dogs and their owners. Now I've taken part in this sport for years and to me its just called running with your dog but give it a fancy name, some new equipment, media coverage and competition and you've got CaniX.

Great initiative to motivate owners and dogs to fit but can you imagine the mayhem at a large competition?
Check out Canicross UK website for more information.

In Like A Lion...

So the groundhog predicted 6 more weeks of winter but did he perdict the wonky weather we've had lately?

+9 to -9 last week and its been the same story for this week? I really shouldn't be complaining because I am enjoying riding and running in the warmer weather but one has to admit its a little weird. March always seems to come in like a lion and leave like a lamb and I believe this year will prove to be no exception - at least with the in like a lion part!

Singles Awareness Day

While surfing for Valentine's info I can across this new satirical holiday... What do you think - does Valentine's Day need a counter-holiday or is this just going too far?

Singles Awareness Day (SAD) celebrates anti-love sentiments on February 13th, 14th and/or 15th. The official description is a holiday to celebrate being happy without a partner or gathering to commiserate being alone but some sites labeled the SAD holiday just self deprecating bad humour.

So would you wish someone "Happy SAD" or "Happy Valentine's Day"?

Valentines Day

Typically cynical towards the 'Hallmark' holiday I decided to do some investigating into the history of Valentine's Day in an attempt to give it some validity.

Originally named after a couple early Christian martyrs but not an official christian holiday it was Chaucer's era in the High Middle Ages who were responsible for developing February 14th into a recognized holiday. Predominantly celebrated in western culture Valentine's Day celebrated a tradition of courtly love in its early days. The exchange of valentines were meant to be a mutual exchange of love notes and in the 18th century an Ester Howland developed a business of selling handmade valentine cards. By the 19th century the card tradition has blossomed and been exported to North America. Today the Greeting Card Association estimates 1 billion cards are exchanged every Valentine's Day.

I guess I'll concede that there is some romantic history to Valentine's Day and though the holiday is far too commercial for my liking it is a nice excuse to show some love!

Groundhog Day

All the groundhogs in North America saw their shadows today and are predicting six more weeks of winter. Can't say I'm overly surprised (when has winter ever ended before the mid March in Canada?) but it would have been a nice relief from the -20 weather we've had all January! The whole groundhog superstition began with western folklore claiming that if a hibernating animal casts a shadow on February 2nd there are another six weeks of winter yet to come.

Mark Engstrom, senior mammals curator at the Royal Ontario Museum, stated in a Toronto Star article today that groundhogs "come out early to mate and are influenced to leave their dens based on the amount of light and their need to procreate. They are not emerging because they think it is warm." My question is if any hibernating animal will do explain to me why we haven't fired these groundhogs for a more preferable animal?

February began with two of the warmest and sunniest days we've had all winter... I'm hoping the groundhogs were wrong on this one and that my horse shedding her winter coat early has a better pulse on mother nature!

For the full groundhog prediction checkout this Toronto Star article.

Babs

Baby Giraffe Video

Check out this video of a baby giraffe being born. Its crazy something with legs that long and awkward can stand within an hour of being born.

Social Media

Thanks to those who took the time to comment on my post. I appreciate you've added checking my blog to your list of work procrastination options.

Some overall thoughts on social media - On the plus side social media is proving to be a cost effective and easily attainable manner to encourage internal and external communication for organizations. It creates an additional outlet for question and answer forums and general conversation. As a marketing or reputation management tool it shows active involvement on behalf of an organizer towards its consumers or stakeholders and can offer a support support system for stakeholders amongst themselves. On the flip side however, though the various forms of online instant media (texting, emailing, blogs, face book, etc.) encourage frequent communication the quality of communication is often sacrificed and the benefit of one-on-one conversation is lost. I can't count the number of conversations I've had go awry over email or text because messages are mixed or misinterpreted. Nothing can beat in-person communication where one can absorb the multitude of environmental and emotional details.

Babs

Day One...

And so it begins... Babs enters the world of social media. Who ever thought that would happen!

Now what should I talk about... How about the fact that apparently today is supposed to be the most depressing day all year (based on weather, light, temperature, length of winter, Monday and such). I have to say that I disagree - how can the day leading up to the most important day of the year, my 25th birthday, be depressing?

Look on the positive side: days keep getting lighter from here, it can't get colder then it was last week, and our winter stat holiday is less then a month away!

Babs